Waste(d) Collectors - (Urban Studies) by Sneha Sharma (Paperback)

About the Book

Going beyond a techno-managerial approach, Sneha Sharma critically interrogates the politics around urban waste disposal in Mumbai. She undertakes an ethnographic journey to the city's most unwanted space, a dumping site, to reveal how spaces and people are made into waste through exclusionary formal and informal practices.

Book Synopsis

Scientific practices of removing waste in mega-cities of the global South are embedded in socio-cultural belief systems which reproduce existing social hierarchies. Thus going beyond a techno-managerial approach in waste management, Sneha Sharma critically interrogates the politics around urban waste disposal in Mumbai, India. She undertakes an ethnographic journey to the city's most unwanted space, a dumping site, to reveal how spaces and people are made into waste through exclusionary formal and informal practices. Offering new insights on topics of urban marginality, informality, urban planning this book will attract scholars from sociology, urban studies, and human geography.

About the Author

Sneha Sharma is a post-doctoral researcher at the department of geography, University of Bonn, Germany. After pursuing her bachelors and masters in sociology, she pursued an M.Phil in Planning and Development from Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, India. She was awarded a DAAD scholarship for undertaking her PhD from Centre for Development Research (ZEF), Bonn. She is working on a project titled "Urban Villages by the Airport", funded by the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung, which analyses intersections of urban renewal and affordable housing near international airports. With her keen interest in informality, discard studies and urban development, she continues to draw from critical perspectives in political ecology and urban sociology to shape her work.